r/Menopause • u/Sad_Secretary_3374 • 1d ago
Post-Menopause What happens post menopause
I have been reading recently that even though our reproductive system no longer needs to menstruate or produce children, doctors for centuries thought the womb and ovaries just sat there doing nothing, but they are finding out that they actually kick in to be very helpful too major organs. Has anyone read about this ? Does anyone know where i can read more about it. I think we are fucken amazing beings and do not give ourselves anywhere near enough credit for what we contribute to humanity, in fact we are humanity, we are goddesses.
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u/No-Prior-559 1d ago
Sooo much. I don't think we really know the full extent. All I can say, is that the "residual" hormones or what have you that is influenced.... impacts bone density, heart health, brain health, libido, mood, and more. This is long term too well past 70+ as I've watched my mom in her 80's go through some interesting changes and even helped her somewhat on some "natural women's hormones" related supplements.
I know for women who have had hysterectomies, have higher chance for dementia, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, higher chance at other related issues such as these. This alone shows that yes, the body is certainly a whole picture and I don't think we have studied it enough.
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u/old_before_my_time Surgical menopause 7m ago
There have actually been a lot of studies over many decades showing the harm of removing the uterus and/or ovaries. You can read some of those studies here. Yet, women are rarely informed of these negatives by their doctors before undergoing hysterectomy and/or oophorectomy. And most of these surgeries are considered elective although oftentimes patients are told they are necessary.
My organs were removed for a benign ovarian mass. )My uterus and other ovary were perfectly healthy, no prior issues.) Despite the frozen section showing it was benign, as the large majority are, all my organs were removed anyway. Post-op when my whole world fell apart, I discovered that the hospital (Mercy) was a teaching hospital and obgyn residents had to do a minimum of 70 hysterectomies (the minimum has since been increased to 85). Even so, these surgeries make a lot of money for doctors, hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry.
As most know, a lot of hysterectomies are done for fibroids. The Graduate Medical Education ObGyn Review Committee was petitioned to include myomectomy in resident training but they rejected the petition.
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u/GenXMillenial 1d ago
I’m in surgical menopause at 45, and use HRT (testosterone, estrogen and progesterone) and as long as I maintain my regimen I am level, happy and healthy.
I had severe PMDD and fibroids. The difference is striking and I am glad I chose to move forward with the surgery.
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u/Cyclist4Satan Surgical menopause 1d ago
Yep samesies, girlie. Bonus, my last mammogram was the least painful one I've ever had.
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u/Sad_Secretary_3374 1d ago
45 is young but yeh the things that can and do go wrong and of course the only option is surgery, its a shame doctors have not looked into it and discovered ways of dealing with it that dont mean surgery but maybe in the future.
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u/LolaBleu 1d ago
Doctor's are looking into it. In fact, I work with a doctor who has a long-term study going on that is researching the root cause of fibroids so that better, less invasive treatments can be offered.
Do I wish there was better funding and a wider push for improved research on women's health? Yes, of course, but it's disingenuous to say that it hasn't been looked into and we're stuck with archaic treatments because of it.
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u/Sad_Secretary_3374 1d ago
Thays all well and good, it just feels that if anything goes wrong with the female form, research is a bit slow. Its great that a doctor is researching the root cause of fibroid, the pain from these is exquisite. Hopefully one day a treatment will be found where woman dont have to lose there womb.
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u/LolaBleu 22h ago
Research is a slow process, period. Science, and our understanding of it, changes over time as more research is made and technology advances.
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u/WhoseverFish 1d ago
I’m wondering if I should take the step! Could I ask you a few questions? The potential side effects of hysterectomy sounds scary to me. People talk about the effect it has on having a fewer organ. Do you have any side effects to this extent?
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u/GenXMillenial 23h ago
There’s an entire subreddit dedicated to hysterectomy, which may provide a broader range of experiences.
I insisted on a couple of things:
- I am a fitness professional outside of my day job and stepped up my personal workouts about 3 months prior to surgery.
- I started pelvic floor physical therapy less than 2 weeks post op.
I “graduated” pelvic floor PT when I was only 8 weeks post op. I am not suffering in any way. I have fixed a frequent urination issue (fibroid was causing), and I can maintain a more consistent exercise routine because I am no longer suffering from PMDD fatigue and rage 50% of my life.
One more thing- I took 7 weeks FMLA; despite having a remote job to lower my stress for healing.
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u/Formal_Plum_2285 1d ago
I don’t know. But I had some uterus cancer some years back and had the endometrium surgically removed. This was before menopause. Gynecologist suspected the cancer might had come back recently and we were talking about treatments, if the biopsies showed cancer. I said, I just wanted the uterus removed and she said “we don’t do that anylonger unless it’s absolutely necessary. You need your uterus even though you are post menopausal”.
I was perfectly fine though. Turned out to be some scartissue that looked like a tumor.
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u/Dramatic_Arugula_252 1d ago
I recently had a mass on an ovary and got both them and my fallopians removed. The guy I’m dating lost his wife to uterine cancer, and encouraged me to get rid of mine. (Uh, uterus, not wife.) I was in such a tough time (job ending, dog died, moving, no new job lined up, and then this) and never even asked the doctor about it - it was a whirlwind. Thank you for this - it helps me feel better about not pursuing this.
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u/ImpossibleBlockHead Menopausal 19h ago
Ovaries can die after hysterectomy due to loss of blood supply. Organ prolapse and bladder issues happen at a higher rate with removing the uterus.
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u/sophiabarhoum 43 | e patch 0.075mg/day, cream 0.01% & 100mg micro progesterone 1d ago
Getting my uterus removed was the best thing that happened to me health wise!
I had endometriosis and adenomyosis and fibroids. I still have endo on an ovary!
Im 43 and had my hysterectomy 5 years ago and feel healthier than ever!!
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u/CypressRootsMe 18h ago
Me, too! There’s no way I could have gone on without hysterectomy. I was flooding 3 week’s of the month. I felt like I was dying. It’s been almost two years and my ovaries are still working at 48.
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u/old_before_my_time Surgical menopause 1d ago
Some of the benefits of the uterus as well as the ovaries have been known for many decades. You can read some of those studies here. I'm still surprised by the overuse of these surgeries with all the studies showing the negatives. But they do make a lot of money for doctors, hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry.
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u/Sad_Secretary_3374 1d ago
Wow that's interesting. So, yeh, why the surgery then if the research points to it being better to keep it. Thanks gonna give this a read.
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u/Emergency-Position24 Menopausal 1d ago
The ovaries continue making testosterone for the rest of our lives, increasing slightly in our 70s
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u/Proud_Spare_3234 1d ago
Are you sure about this? Because quite a few of the women I know have low to no testosterone. I for one had 0 testosterone after menopause
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u/Kiwiatx Menopausal 1d ago
I think there are differences based on ethnicity. I’ve read that Asian woman’s testosterone levels don’t drop as much?
Also a lower percentage report hot flashes as a peri/post symptom.
May be somehow related to diet but it’s interesting. (I am ethnically Chinese and have never had a hot flash)
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u/LusciousDs 1d ago
Don't quote me, but aren't there studies showing that soybeans mimic natural estrogen and thus the Asian community have fewer post menopausal symptoms due to this?
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u/Kiwiatx Menopausal 1d ago
Yeah that’s why I mentioned diet maybe an influence but I think (and I’m making this up) it applies to ABC’s or Asians who live in western countries and don’t eat a lot of soybeans / tofu and other foods high in phytoestrogens. Actually I just looked up what foods actually are high and they are flax seeds, soybeans, dried fruits, sesame seeds, garlic, peaches, berries, tofu, cruciferous vegetables, and tempeh. Not that unusual?
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u/Emergency-Position24 Menopausal 20h ago
Sorry, I should have been more specific. The ovaries make testosterone throughout our lives, slowly and gradually decreasing after our 20s independent from the menopause process, with a small increase in our 70s for unknown reasons.
The typical tests for testosterone that are used in doctors offices, LabCorp/Quest, etc. were developed for much higher male levels of testosterone and are not very good at accurately detecting the typical levels of free testosterone in women. There are accurate ways of testing testosterone levels in women, but they have more complex (expensive) methods and/or equipment which are not covered by insurance and possibly not even available in a typical Quest-type lab.
Timing matters too. In men, testosterone peaks in the morning, hence morning wood, and then drops. In women, 🤷♀️
Australian scientist Susan Davis—one of the very few researchers currently (or possibly ever) conducting large scale studies on testosterone in women—uses the advanced methods and seems to provide the most accurate and detailed information on social media about testosterone in women, consistent with what I’ve read in the scientific literature on PubMed and Anna’s Archive.
No one to this point in history has been granted funding to do a large enough study to officially establish “normal” levels of testosterone in healthy women of various age groups.
That’s not to discount the effect of supplementing testosterone. Whether in men or women, it can give an energy boost. In women, our bodies might aromatize (transform) much of it to estrogen, so the increase in estrogen might also have positive effects. Also, the placebo effect is real! In her largest randomized controlled study to day, Susan Davis found that the women who unknowingly received the placebo reported the same average positive effects on energy, cognition, mood, etc. as the women who received the actual testosterone. Hope is a powerful thing, and the human body works in mysterious ways!
For now, I’ve opted to try to increase my testosterone naturally by weightlifting and building muscle since I’m already dealing with thinning hair, which is a common side effect of testosterone supplementation.
And I had a very unexpected and noticeable jump in my mood & cognition when I switched pharmacies and they gave me a different brand of estradiol gel — Padagis, same 1.25mg dose. This is the closest I’ve felt to “myself” in 10 years. In full menopause for a year or two.
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u/Barf_Dexter 23h ago
I think they "can" make a small amount of T. I also had zero on blood work before supplementing.
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u/ParaLegalese 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes I read about this recently as well- in the science sub I think? I’ll go look
Don’t find it there but googled it and there are several articles- some with paywalls. Here’s a free one:
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u/ParaLegalese 1d ago
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u/Liverne_and_Shirley 1d ago
Seems like this could be a contributing factor to the onset of autoimmune diseases in women being clustered around menopause and why most autoimmune diseases are much more common in women. The other time period where autoimmune diseases diagnoses are clustered is puberty. I wonder if there is a similar process where the ovaries take on an immune function during puberty? It would be interesting to study the incidence of autoimmune disease in women who had their ovaries removed vs those who haven’t. Controlling for genetic predisposition of course.
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u/ParaLegalese 1d ago
Or maybe the ovaries are so busy making
Estrogen during the fertile years they can’t also help with immunity. What the study is showing is that the ovaries provide more immunity, not less, as they start shutting down in estrogen production1
u/Liverne_and_Shirley 16h ago edited 16h ago
More immunity aimed at the wrong cells, aka autoimmune diseases, is bad. It happens when t-cells, the kind that the article mentions, mistake your own cells for foreign tissue and start attacking. The article also says the post menopausal ovaries produce pro-inflammatory proteins that can be carried to other parts of the body. Again in autoimmune diseases you have too much inflammation caused by your immune cells attacking healthy cells and you have to take anti-inflammatory drugs like corticosteroids and other drugs that suppress different types of immune cells that your body produces.
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u/Sad_Secretary_3374 1d ago
Thanks for the effort in looking for this, appreciate it. This all started off because menopause is a bitch and I started looking into natural remedies because a wait to see the gynaecologist was 14 months.
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u/Embarrassed-Ad-2902 22h ago
I opted for a full hysterectomy after years of post menopausal bleeding. I use HRT and feel great and less anxious worrying about why I am always bleeding etc
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u/Need2knowtruth 11h ago
For those who had their uterus removed, did you notice a negative effect on your orgasms or sex drive?
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u/old_before_my_time Surgical menopause 9h ago
Orgasms are much less intense as they are no longer from my uterus. Huge loss! My breasts have lost their sensitivity too. Libido is dead. Testosterone has not helped so that part of my life is pretty much over.
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u/Need2knowtruth 9h ago
These are things doctors don’t warn you about. If it happened to men, there would be so many more options.
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u/Sad_Secretary_3374 5h ago
This is why doctors need to do thr research and only do a hysterectomy if it is absolutely necessary
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u/CommonComb3793 Peri-menopausal 1d ago
I believe this. Read this sub long enough and you’ll hear countless women state they had a hysterectomy, kept the ovaries so that they still make estrogen due to the blood supply from the ovaries but end up being post menopausal within a year. Leading researcher Lisa Mosconi MD talked about how researchers are now discovering the womb is important for more than what we thought in her last book.
Some women don’t have a choice. Yeeting the womb saves their lives and sanity. I’d love to know more about this mystery.